


triple axel

by Speechwriter (batmansymbol)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, F/M, Getting Together, Ice Skating, Pining, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, draco and hermione are olympians, figure skater draco, oh no there's only one ice skating rink, speed skater hermione
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24593773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batmansymbol/pseuds/Speechwriter
Summary: “As I’ve said ten thousand times, Malfoy,” she says, unbuckling her helmet, still breathing hard, “you wouldn’t last a second in speed skating.” She tugs the helmet off and her hair springs free. She shakes it back with supreme disdain. “You know what, though? I’m starting to think I’d like to see you try.”“Oh, would you?”“Yes. I really would. You’d try one turn and plow into the wall, and then all my earthly problems would be solved.”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 16
Kudos: 196





	triple axel

Draco gets to the rink at 6 p.m., as always, and there she is, eating into his time. As always.

He sighs, drops his equipment bag into a seat at the edge of the ice, and leans up against the boards to watch. She obviously hasn’t even noticed him, which is pretty insulting. Of course, she’s probably moving too quickly to see anything but a blur. She’s marked off a short track with orange cones, and she’s hunched over, low and aerodynamic and tilting into a perilous turn, her unruly hair positively bursting out from beneath her protective helmet, her gloved fingertips skimming the ice as she goes. The look on her face is one of such intense focus that it looks almost like anger.

Draco glances around the rink. The place is deserted—her coach must already have left, and the benefit of evening practice is privacy, after all. There’s no sound except the hiss and glide and clack of her blades across the ice.

She rockets past him, over the laser-marked finish line, and Draco unthinkingly breathes in as she passes, a rush of air that smells like nothing but the cold. There’s a tinny _beep_ as a timer automatically stops.

She straightens up out of her stance, panting—still not looking at him. This is getting ridiculous.

“Carry on,” he drawls. “I’ll just wait.”

She wobbles. Actually wobbles. Olympic gold medalist Hermione Granger wobbles.

She spins on the ice to face him and overcorrects, her shoulder bobbing. Draco’s never understood how she can hurtle at those impossible speeds when she’s racing, as streamlined as a bullet, and move like _this_ when she’s out of race. He tries to tell himself it’s not endearing.

“Malfoy,” she pants, her cheeks flushed. “I know, I know. I’m over time.”

“Yes, you are,” Draco says, arching a brow, as she glides around the rink to grab up her cones. “You know, I wouldn’t mind watching, if you were doing something more interesting than _laps._ ”

It’s a lie, of course, just part of their usual back-and-forth. There’s nothing about her that he minds watching. Actually, he’s considered ‘accidentally’ showing up half an hour early to watch her practice, but that seems like it could be classified as desperate. He hasn’t sunk that low yet.

“As I’ve said ten thousand times, Malfoy,” she says, unbuckling her helmet, still breathing hard, “you wouldn’t last a second in speed skating.” She tugs the helmet off and her hair springs free. She shakes it back with supreme disdain. “You know what, though? I’m starting to think I’d like to see you try.”

“Oh, would you?”

“Yes. I really would. You’d try one turn and plow into the wall, and then all my earthly problems would be solved.” She glides out of the rink and clunks onto the rubber, where she takes off those nightmare skates all the speed skaters wear. The blades are comically long, like murder weapons in a schlocky 50s whodunit, and the boots are low-profile slips of black leather and carbon fiber that practically melt onto the foot, made for aerodynamism and flexibility in the ankle rather than support. Even the idea of putting those things on makes Draco feel a pang in his left ankle.

“Anyway,” she says, “the ice is yours. So, go on.” She makes a patronizing shooing motion. “Do your little pirouettes.”

Draco crosses his arms, watching as she clunks over to a seat to remove her skates. She’s wearing her uniform today. It’s spandex, and for something skintight, it’s startlingly, resolutely unsexy, more like a wetsuit than anything. It’s emblematic of speed skating as a whole, Draco thinks. All efficiency and absolutely no style. Where’s the _allure_ in it?

Maybe the resolute unsexiness is a good thing, though, because now he’s picturing her in that dark glittering dress that Sweden wore for Sochi’s free skate, and the rink suddenly feels warmer than regulation temperature.

Draco isn’t sure when he started being interested in Hermione Granger, but it’s definitely been going on for upward of a year now. The whole thing has been catastrophic for his ego. She’s obviously disinterested in him, if not outright disdainful. It’s not even like she’s so irresistibly good-looking—and yet, whenever he walks in and sees her tearing across the ice, practically sprinting, her arms cutting the air like twin scythes, he can’t take his eyes off her. He can’t take his eyes off her _now,_ loosening the straps on her skates with a hard, graceless tug.

For God’s sake, why couldn’t he have developed feelings for any one of the women’s figure skating team, half of whom have enthusiastically propositioned him? Why _Hermione Granger?_ It’s the most doomed prospect of all time. Even if she didn’t obviously loathe him on a personal level, there’d still be her ridiculous grudge against all figure skaters to contend with.

“When _you_ land a triple axel,” he says with affront, “you can call them _little pirouettes._ ”

She laughs, stripping off her gloves. “And why would I have any interest in landing a triple axel?”

“Oh, I don’t know. For the grace? The elegance? The glory? You do realize it’s only Norway, Holland, and Korea who actually care about speed skating?”

“Yes, well, maybe I don’t treat this like a popularity contest, Malfoy. Though I wouldn’t expect a figure skater to understand that.” She sniffs at him, like he’s a bad smell that needs confirmation, and kneads the arch of one foot with her fingertips. After a moment, she gives him a shrewd look. “You know, for someone who’s always complaining about the fact that I run into your practice time, you never seem in a particular hurry to get onto the ice.”

“Maybe I enjoy our little chats.”

“Or,” she shoots back instantly, “maybe you’re just worried I’ll see you fall.”

Draco sighs. “I’m perfectly aware that anyone who wants to see me fall can pull up that video from Sochi. I’m sure you watch it on bad days to cheer yourself up, do you?”

She hesitates. There’s a flicker of uncertainty in her face that he’s never seen before. “No,” she says. “Of course I don’t.”

Draco isn’t sure what to say. He doesn’t even know why he brought up the topic. The single day he competed in the Sochi Olympics was disastrous, possibly the worst day of his life. He took two falls in the short program, the second of which gave him such a serious ankle injury that he had to miss the free skate final—still, to this day, his favorite routine of his career, gone to waste.

He’s spent the two years since in physical therapy, only now getting back to his proper form. It’s all been awful. But the most sobering part has been realizing that absolutely nobody felt bad for him when it happened. In fact, given Draco’s reputation at the time—arrogant perfectionist, bad winner, cold and inaccessible in interviews, once likened rival skater Harry Potter’s routine to “the death throes of a headless chicken”—most people seemed to watch the fall with glee.

Draco has always assumed Granger agreed, but now she’s looking at him with guarded consideration. _Of course I don’t_. She said it like she knows how painful and humiliating it was for him—like she wouldn’t enjoy his pain or humiliation.

“Well,” he says, tugging his equipment bag out of its seat and sitting to lace up his own skates, across the aisle from her. “That’s surprising.”

“Why?”

Draco glances over, lacing up his left boot, unsure if she’s joking. “Granger, we’ve been in this rink for a year and a half and this is the closest you’ve ever come to friendly conversation.”

“The closest _I’ve_ come?” The consideration is gone. Now she’s staring at him like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You’re the one who’s always making fun of speed skating! Draco bloody Malfoy and your news articles, and your two-thousand-pound coats, and your—your _face,_ and your well-publicised affairs with all your pair skating partners … I honestly don’t know why you even bother punching down at me, when everyone else is so busy stroking your ego.”

Draco’s abandoned his laces. His mouth is ajar. _Punching down?_ Is that how she’s seen the last year and a half?

Also, what was _that_ supposed to mean, _and your face?_

“I know nobody takes me seriously,” she says, and now, to Draco’s panic, there’s real strain in her voice. She looks properly upset. “I don’t know why _you_ have to pile on.” She stands and grabs her athletic bag. “Have a good practice.”

She’s made it maybe ten steps before he finds his voice. He stands. “Wait. Granger. _Granger!_ ”

She slows, then stops, but it’s a moment before she looks over her shoulder. Her face is reluctant, and a bit blotchy.

Draco takes several steps toward her. His feet nearly come out of his half-laced boots. With his skates on and hers off, he’s a full foot taller than her, a fact he’s a bit too aware of.

“Of course I take you seriously,” he says. “You’ve won gold twice, how could I _not_ take you seriously?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I thought this was just … just repartee,” he says, suddenly and wholly aware of how stupid it sounds, this narrative he’s built up in his head. “Me poking fun at speed skating because you hate figure skating so much. I don’t actually think … I mean, God, who cares if only Norway and Holland and Korea follow the sport? You’re still the best in the world.” Draco casts a disgusted look down at his own feet, at his own ankle. “And I’m just some post-injury has-been who never even got past bronze, so who gives a shit what I think, anyway?”

He tries to laugh, it feels so horrible to say. Like peeling a bandage off to expose a wound. The laugh sounds flat and unconvincing.

Granger is looking at him as if she’s never seen him before.

“That’s not how people see you,” she says. “And I don’t _hate_ figure skating.”

Draco lets out a scoff. “Granger, you don’t have to be delicate with my feelings. Everyone on the figure skating team knows you hate it. It’s like an inside joke with us. Don’t slip, you don’t want another reason for Granger to think we’re useless.”

“Really?” Surprise erases the last of the hurt from her face. “No, I’m serious. I don’t hate the sport itself.” She glances over to the ice, which reflects the white lights in cages that hang above. “I suppose I’m sensitive about it, because it’s … well, it’s all those things you said, isn’t it? Elegance and beauty and … and, well, no one likes seeing hard work or exertion or _sweat,_ do they. They want everything to look effortless on the ice.” Her mouth moves in a hesitant, self-conscious approximation of a smile. “And obviously I wouldn’t know _effortless_ if it slapped me across the face.”

Draco looks at Granger, shifting her grip on her athletic bag. There’s beauty in what she does, too. It’s a kind of beauty he can’t understand, and maybe that’s why he can’t look away from it. Figure skating is grace, it’s polish and pliancy, it’s weightlessness. But the way she tears through the air like someone hunting, like someone searching, always striving—it’s effortful, yes, and honest in a way Draco could never manage, free of artifice or illusion. The artifice is what Draco’s always excelled in, his high-stakes game of pretend.

He can’t even manage the honesty to say any of this.

“I saw you at Sochi, you know,” she goes on, more tentatively. “That was before we met, obviously, but I saw you practicing your free skate. It was really pretty extraordinary. Something about it.” She pauses, looking a bit nervous. “I still think about it sometimes.”

For a moment he can’t answer. He can’t believe she brought that routine up of her own volition, the missed performance that’s stuck under his skin for the past two years, impossible to shake, the greatest regret of his career. He can’t believe it stuck with her, too.

It seems impossible that she was there in the stands, watching, even admiring, when for the past year and a half, he’s thought she had no feelings toward him but disdain.

“I think about that routine every day,” he says.

The words shock him as much as they seem to surprise her. Draco hasn’t told anyone that, not his coach, not the other figure skaters, not even his own parents. He’s always pretended he doesn’t care about what could have happened that year.

She seems at a loss. There’s something soft and sympathetic in her expression.

He crouches to finish doing up his laces, his heart beating a bit too hard. “By the way,” he says, trying for a casual tone, “I haven’t actually had an affair with anyone I’ve skated with.”

“You—what?”

“You said, well-publicized affairs. I know there are articles about me and Pansy, and Cho, and Parvati, but none of that actually happened. … I’d like to say it’s just my incredible ability to manufacture chemistry on ice, but I know for a fact that Pansy did an anonymous tip-off on our supposed relationship because she thought it was funny.”

Granger lets out a small, astonished laugh. “But I thought … I mean, the way you _look_ at them when you’re—I mean …”

Draco looks up. She’s gone bright red. He can’t believe it. Has Hermione Granger just admitted to watching videos of his pair routines? With special attention to the way he _looked_ at his partners?

“Granger,” he says, straightening up, unable to stop a smile spreading slow across his face. “It’s my job to look at them like that. Like I really feel something for them.”

She hoists her bag up onto her shoulder, then fights to get a curl of hair free from under it, face redder than ever. “Yes, I know that, obviously. It’s just very realistic, that’s all.”

“It’s not that realistic.”

A flicker of confusion in her expression. Draco’s mouth is dry. He knows what he _wants_ to say. He just doesn’t know if he has the spine.

The words fall out, neither cool nor collected, graceless. “I could show you. What I’d—what it would really look like, if I …”

Draco abandons the effort. He steps up onto the ice and waits.

Granger looks at him for a long moment. He’s expecting her to say something curt and hurry away, or to tell him he’s out of his mind, or even to laugh in his face.

Instead, she lets her athletic bag fall to the ground. She tugs out those death-trap skates of hers, and with four rasps of the Velcro, they’re on her feet.

Granger steps up to the rink and onto the ice. “Show me, then,” she says.

Draco can’t look away from her face, the careful expression, like she’s barely shielding disbelief. He understands. Part of him is waiting to wake up. He glides backward on the ice, and she follows until they’re in the center of the rink.

Draco extends his hand, and after a second’s hesitation, she slips hers into his. Draco’s stomach squeezes. Her skin is cool, like the air around them. She’s as tense as if she were about to race.

He tugs her gently toward him; she’s weightless on the ice. “Enemy territory, Granger,” Draco says, letting his hand rest on her waist. The uniform hugs her so tightly that he could imagine he’s touching skin. “You realize you’re not allowed to make fun of what I do after this.”

She raises her eyebrows, looking unimpressed. “I’ll stop when you stop.”

“Fair enough. I suppose we’re doomed to years of acrimony, then.”

Her lips twitch. “I suppose so.”

Draco shifts his hand in hers, clasping with a bit more force. She swallows, and the idea that he’s affecting her is a cool, sweet rush. “Can you spin?” he asks, his voice throaty.

She lets out a shaky laugh. “A bit.”

“Slowly, then. Go on. Lift your arms.” They revolve on the ice, and he extends his arm. She spins slowly out from him, her arms rising.

“Good,” he murmurs. The part of his mind obsessed with balance and poise recognizes that her motions are ungainly, her arms only ever used to power her over the ice, but the way she glances at him for reassurance—it makes him lose all sense of finesse. He’s never felt so unbalanced himself, as he glides behind her.

“Now we’ll go backward together,” he says. “Lean back. … There.”

She does. Her back presses lightly, tentatively against his chest.

“Right hand here.” He takes her hand and guides it up, back, so that her fingers are resting against the side of his face. Then he lets both his hands settle on her waist. She doesn’t feel like his partners, with their lithe frames, so easy to lift and maneuver; there’s no supplication in the way she stands or moves. She’s built to go, and to go alone. But she’s leaning against him, trusting him with her weight.

She looks up and over her shoulder. He looks down at her; her eyes, cool and brown and clear as bourbon, reflect the lights in their grids. Slowly they begin to move, gliding backward over the ice. Their motion makes a cool breeze rise, rushing over the back of Draco’s neck, though it does nothing to soothe the fever in his skin.

“Your heart’s beating really hard,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” he says, “well, skating backward is really strenuous and athletic, so.”

And then she’s smiling, her front teeth slightly large but very straight, and he’s seen that smile before, but never directed at him, and for once in his life he’s just done with pretending. He turns his left foot, pressing the blade into the ice, and they come to an abrupt halt, and he turns her upon the ice and kisses her. She responds so quickly and fiercely that he nearly slips, her hand squeezing the back of his neck. His hands sink into her hair, which feels just the way he imagined it might, soft and dense and impossible to contain.

The way they’re pressing against each other, their skates are pushing slowly outward, and so he slips one hand into the small of her back and tugs her flush to him. She makes a tiny noise into the kiss that seems to sear his lips, and Draco has to break away then just to look at her, to look at the wideness of her eyes and the way her lips are parted, her hair tousled.

“What are you doing now?” he breathes.

“I have no idea.”

“Let me take you to dinner.”

“But you have practice.”

“Granger, we practice every day. Let me take you to dinner.”

He lets his lips fall to hers again, eyes tight shut, trying to memorize the soft feeling of her mouth, the way she shifts against him, her fingers brushing his jaw.

He feels her smile. He wants to feel it for hours.

“The responsible choice,” she says, pulling back, “would be to take me to dinner after you’ve practiced.”

Draco can’t help smiling. “Mm. I see. That’s my pathway to gold, is it?”

Her bright, brassy laugh echoes around the empty rink. “It is,” she says, and she’s teasing him, and he loves the sound of it. “There’s simply no other way.”

He brushes a curl away from her eye.

“Forget the gold, then,” he says, and he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for Kyla :)


End file.
